What do I do now?
by SaucyHandles
Summary: A story written in my puppies memory. Don't read if you don't wish to be saddened. Just written as a way for me to try and sort through my emotions.


**I don't even know why I wrote this, other than maybe to try to hold onto the pain I felt today. This story is a telling of today's tragedy.**

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I had forgotten what it was to feel true pain so easily. Forgotten how quick things can go from being okay to having your heart shattered from but a few simple words.

"She's dead."

The words I heard in the next room as I stood in the kitchen checking on the bread I had set to bake an hour prior. The words that made my eyes widen in fear, and my limbs move of their own accord as I quickly ran from the kitchen towards the room the statement came from.

I had no clue at the time what to expect, but I knew I'd only find pain. Still, I needed to know.

The sight I was cursed to see will forever be burned into my mind. The pain likely reoccurring as I no doubt think back on it in the future.

In the room my brother stood cradling a small dead puppy in the palm of his hands. In the room my family stood, surrounding my brother who now held the small lifeless form of my happiness.

She was still just a baby.

A puppy only a few months old.

She held so much of my hope in her...

The runt of the litter that had to fight and be strong to grow up. The puppy that spent the first month unable to eat by herself and needed to be bottle fed. The puppy that was _just_ starting to get better and play with the other puppies.

And now she's dead.

Crushed under foot by a person who didn't have the decency to watch where they walked. Crushed while she was having her face cleaned by her mom.

Skull shattered and blood pooling from her mouth. That's the last image I get to carry with me forever now. The burden and pain I will harbor.

She didn't even have a name, yet now she's gone in one of the most horrific ways that could have been possible...

Died not from illness, but from the neglect of a person who didn't look down.

Not looking down.

Something so simple cost me my future friend. Cost me so much happiness. Made me feel pain, regret, numbness.

And at the time, anger.

So, so, so much anger...

But an hour has passed and the cloth used to clean her body sits on the counter now, stained in my friends blood. Stained in my now broken hopes and emotions.

I can't bear the idea of going out there and seeing it. Can't bear the thought that I have no choice in the matter but to face the scene that holds so much pain for me. Can't bear the thought that I'll soon have to go take care of the bread I set to bake but a foot away from that bloodied rag.

I will, but the hollow expanse that now encompasses my emotions will only be reinforced. A barrier so that I don't lose my sanity.

Thinking back now after all my tears have dried and with the anger having fled. I find myself sorry, sorry that I had wished the person who had committed the accident so much pain. Wished that they would suffer.

Now though I simply feel regret for thinking those things. Thinking about it brings me so much pain, and I hate it. But more so I hate knowing my pain is likely dwarfed by theirs. Their pain that of knowing you killed something so precious.

Placing myself in their bloodied shoes, I find myself increasingly filled with sorrow that I would dare hold such anger towards someone already in so much pain.

I now know there is no blame. So many things encompassed this single accident. So many things that could have been done to prevent it. Most of all I now know that if there were blame to be held for the death of my small puppy, it has already been atoned for in their own pain.

Now as I sit here typing this so that I might sort out how I should feel. I can't help but to question, "What now?".

Now that all the emotion and grief has dwindled down to but a flickering flame, I find myself feeling rather numb and hollow. I feel as though the death that had occurred only an hour ago should mean something.

It's eating away at me that now, with the emotions gone it almost feels as though it were meaningless. I feel like my emotions are betraying me and the pup by not lingering longer. By not hurting so much anymore.

In the time since I have begun typing this, I have since removed the loaf of bread from where it once cooked, and simply sat staring at it.

The puppy had been alive when I had begun to make the dough and set it to cook, and now as I looked at the finished product she was dead and buried.

The concept of how fast it all happened boggles my mind.

Here I am now when all is said and done, sitting at my computer typing a story that I have no true conclusion to. No real lesson I have learned from it. No concise ending to make anyone who has read this, myself included, feel better.

All I can do is ask, what do I do now?

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 **That's that... a brief telling of how I just lost my puppy.**


End file.
